The Terminal List: Dark Wolf Series Premiere Review — Brotherhood, Betrayal, and the Weight of History
If you thought The Terminal List was heavy, buckle in. The Terminal List: Dark Wolf Season 1 doesn’t explode onto the screen with the same “this one case changes everything” intensity, but that’s the trick.
This isn’t about the end of something. It’s about the messy, impossible beginning of Ben Edwards’ path.
And it’s also about Hastings, Mo, and even about the Israeli women who prove again and again that war isn’t as simple as who your leaders are. The world doesn’t move in straight lines, and neither does this show.
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf Season 1 Episode 1, “Inherent Resolve”
It opens with Edwards pondering how the military is often portrayed as a righteous path to freedom or glory, which sounds appealing on a recruitment poster, but in practice, it’s about dragging yourself and your brothers home in one piece.
That’s the reality Edwards, Hastings, and Boozer face when they walk into a hostage exchange that everyone watching at home knows will go sideways.
Eighteen hostages lined up on a bridge, one man being traded, ISIS soldiers with guns pointed at civilians. And then the whole thing detonates into chaos.
Edwards can barely get the words out — “they’re going to shoot those hostages” — before the air is filled with gunfire. And then the bridge actually explodes.
It’s terrifying, and then AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” crashes in, and I thought, oh, hell yes. Because if you’re Gen X, those bells don’t just mean doom; they mean we’re alive, baby. That’s the soundtrack of my life, and yes, I know AC/DC is technically a boomer band, but we’re the ones who lived them.
But what happens after is the meat of this story. Reece shows up, still the steady hand, cigar in his teeth, gifting Edwards Once an Eagle for the third time (and Ben still hasn’t cracked it — and don’t we all have that one book staring at us from the shelf?).
There’s laughter, whiskey, and talks of family. These are men clinging to the scraps of normalcy between firefights.
And then Daran. Sweet God, Daran. The interpreter, who only wanted his family to be safe, who cooked with his wife, and who thought maybe his kids could escape to America.
Instead, he becomes a suicide bomber, sweating bullets as he walks into the mess hall, pulling out a detonator, and killing himself and the men around him. And yes, the dog knew. The dog always knows. And I’ll never forgive them for making me watch an animal die.
And it was all for nothing. Daran believed Al-Jabouri that becoming a bomb would save his family, but by the time Edwards and co reached them, his wife was dead and his children missing. And a message scrawled in blood, “He who abandons the caliphate, abandons God.”
That transgression marks the beginning of Edwards’ downward spiral.
He screams at his commanders, “Fuck you and fuck you and fuck you,” when he realizes assets are worth more than men. And then he pulls the trigger on Al-Jabouri, deciding that if the CIA won’t do what needs to be done, he will.
That’s the crack. That’s where the man we met in The Terminal List begins to take shape.
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf Season 1 Episode 2, “The Audition”
Episode 2 hurts differently. Firefights are a dime a dozen, but for anyone who watched SEAL Team, you know the importance of a SEAL’s trident. Stripping Edwards and Hastings of theirs was nothing more than a message about following commands, and it made me want to wretch.
Hastings didn’t even deserve it. He wanted out and was ready to leave. But when Edwards crossed the line, Hastings stood there, shoulder to shoulder, and let them strip his soul too.
That’s brotherhood, and it’s brutal to watch, because you know he’s not going to be able to save Ben from what comes next, no matter how hard he tries.
Edwards tries to joke with Reece — doodling “Bigfoot’s dick” inside a book like they’re still teenagers. And Taylor Kitsch, God bless him, has that vulnerability that just guts you. He has the kind of face that makes you want to hug him, even as he’s sliding deeper into darkness.
And then comes Jed Haverford, the CIA’s answer to temptation.
Cool as a cucumber, tossing drinks onto his tab, smiling that “I know something you don’t” smile.
He offers them purpose, revenge, and the chance to keep fighting. He’s the hammer and the men are the nails, willingly used to exact vengeance with a blessing.
So suddenly, Edwards and Hastings are in Vienna, playing assassins in a nightclub. EDM is pounding like a migraine, Hastings cracking necks in back rooms, Edwards pouring salt down a woman’s throat to save her life when an op goes wrong.
It’s insane, it’s chaotic, and it’s precisely the kind of work the CIA thrives on — plausible deniability painted as patriotism.
And when Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” crashes in? Forget it. Edwards has passed the audition. But those bells from AC/DC and Metallica are just the beginning. They play a role in what’s ahead, too, and I can’t help but applaud the missive.
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf Season 1 Episode 3, “What’s Past Is Prologue”
Here’s where it all goes global. Geneva. Nuclear talks. Iran on the brink of a deal that was real history — July 14, 2015, the day the Iran nuclear agreement was signed.
It’s surreal, watching Edwards and Mo moving through a world we actually lived through, knowing that in 2025, Trump would bomb the hell out of Iran’s facilities to stop the very same threat.
And look, nobody likes to talk about anything Trump did as a “win,” but you can’t deny it happened. This show reminds us that history doesn’t stop when the credits roll — it’s been in play for at least a decade, and it still is.
This is also where Mo steps into the light. And his story is almost too much to bear. A boy who lost his sisters and father to terror, picked up a weapon as a teenager to fight beside Americans, and who got to put a bullet into the man responsible.
That was his beginning. Now he’s being used as Denawi’s double, thrust into CIA and Mossad plots, trying to carry out missions that could either save the world or destroy it.
And then there are the women. Eliza and Tal — Mossad operatives who don’t mess around. And can I just say how refreshing it is that they’re not caricatures?
It’s so easy to flatten Mossad into headlines, but these women are complicated. They’re smart, ruthless when they need to be, but they’re also human.
They’ve been fighting in the shadows for decades, not for glory, not for politics, but because someone has to stop the next nightmare. They’re badasses, and they remind us that two things can be true at once: governments can be monsters, and the individuals inside those systems can be heroes.
By the time the credits roll, Edwards has lost his wife, his hope, and his grip on right and wrong. Mo has defied expectations and let Dawali’s daughter go free. And Ish (Michael Ealy!), touted as a damn legend, is dead already, because this show isn’t interested in giving us comfort.
James Reece: The Counterweight
I can’t wrap this up without talking about Reece because even though this is Edwards’ story, Reece is the one who keeps popping up like a reminder of what could have been.
He’s the brother who still believes in the mission and Edwards. He’s the man handing out cigars and books and photos of Lucy, the man who wants his guys to know the fight matters.
Watching him in these early episodes is brutal because we know where he ends up, but more than that, we know how much Edwards will betray him later.
It’s almost cruel that Reece is the steady anchor while Edwards is flailing. Doesn’t that make the knife twist deeper? It’s like watching one man plant himself in the soil and another man dig his way out — only the one digging thinks he’s rising, when really, he’s just burying himself alive.
The Cast
And yes, I have to mention the cast, because they stacked this thing. Taylor Kitsch, obviously, is doing the kind of vulnerable, volatile work he’s been good at since Friday Night Lights.
The strapping Tom Hopper as Hastings gives the whole series its conscience. Robert Wisdom plays Haverford as a CIA smooth talker with just enough menace to make your skin crawl, but enough heart to crack it in half when things go south with Ish.
Then you’ve got a Hemsworth brother (Luke) as Landry, Chris Diamantopoulos (Silicon Valley, always a delight) as Fuller, and LaMonica Garrett — who stole scenes in 1883 — as Commander Cox.
DB Sweeney even pops up for a blink, reminding me that he’s the kind of actor who can walk into a scene and make you sit up straighter.
And this is just the beginning.
Later this season, we’ll see Jeanne Tripplehorn, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Constance Wu, Betty Gilpin, and, apparently, Riley Keough will return as Reece’s wife.
That’s a lot of firepower for a spinoff. Even Michael Ealy, who once told me I had a beautiful name (bless him), shows up just long enough to break my heart.
Final Thoughts
So what is The Terminal List: Dark Wolf really about? It’s about how men like Edwards can start out believing in brotherhood and end up burning every bridge behind them.
It’s about how Hastings can sacrifice his future just to stand beside his brother, even when that brother is wrong.
It’s about how Mo represents the collateral humanity in all of this, and how Eliza and Tal remind us that women in these fights have always been here, even when history books forget to mention them.
And it’s also about us. About how deals signed in Vienna in 2015 echo into the choices leaders make in 2025, and how no matter who’s sitting in the White House, these fights don’t stop.
What about you?
Do you think Edwards is redeemable, or is this the long road to damnation?
Does Hastings break your heart as much as he broke mine? And are you cheering for Mo and the Mossad women as the real heroes of this mess?
Sound off — because I can’t be the only one screaming at my TV about all this.
Watch The Terminal List: Dark Wolf Online
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